Dunno if this violates rule 3 but here I go: I am a 21 year old male currently living with a family member, I only have a DL and a High School Diploma and nothing else. I’m in the deep south so trade unions are hard to get into. I have a disqualifying condition so I can’t join the military. Getting a job is difficult because they never respond. Question in title.
You’re 21, and I didn’t realize this until I was like 32, but you don’t need a career yet. You need a job. The career will come from… Doing the jobs you want to do instead of your actual jobs.
when I worked at a liquor store like a decade ago, I stayed away from the registers unless it was necessary and no other work had to be done. I organized the entire overstock room and opened up another 300 sqft of storage in the process. I commented on processes that seemed inefficient and suggested improvements.
When I worked in breweries, I stayed out of the front of house. I started scrubbing tanks and finished an operations manager.
When I worked in IT support, I pointed out insecure practices and suggested secure practices. I’m now in cybersecurity.
I didn’t wanna work in a liquor store. I didn’t wanna scrub tanks. I didn’t wanna answer phones. So I… Didn’t. Unless I had to.
Just go get a job and find something there no one is doing that has value. Then lie on your resume by changing your title to match your duties.
This works if you have decent employers that let you do these things. I’ve literally been told “stop thinking so much” at a menial job where there could’ve been a lot of improvements made. Because there were people who had really high salaries that were supposed to think of these improvements. Not us cockroaches.
But honestly the best thing these jobs can give you, besides experience of course, is connections to people who may later work in better places.
If it’s menial job, it ain’t paying enough to tell you what to do if the shit you need to do is getting done.
Get the shit done. Don’t ignore your duties. And from there, literally ignore them. Let them fire you for improving the place. Be a great story to politely explain in a future interview at a menial job. Jobs that menial aren’t in short supply. They just blow and the pay sucks. So, don’t let it have any power over you beyond those facts.
Ah that’s the thing. I’m incapable of doing the same exact shit for 8 hours a day for prolonged periods of time. The mind immediately wanders to “what could I do better”.
With that mentality, they sealed the deal and I left instead of trying to get into a better job at the same company (it was the kind of company where there are actually good jobs too, but fairly separated from the menial ones)